Free Cards of Grief by Jane Yolen Page B

scale-skinned girl from Waters. Queens do not sweat.
    The lamps were low, their small flames made gentler by the colored glass that framed them: oranges and blues and a filtered green that reminded me of the sea off the shore of L’Lal’dome. Shadows played across the ceiling where silken hangings blew and billowed in the pulsing air.
    The Queen lay back against her cushions, a darker shadow than the ones dancing above her. She did not move, not even to wave a hand to call me in. I could not see her mouth but she spoke to me in that court whisper. I thought, flushing, pleased, that every room in L’Lal’dome must have echoed with her royal command.
    “Come, B’oremos, plow me. Give me a girl child that my line may live.”
    And I tried. Oh, how I tried. All the positions and words and gyrations I had practiced and had been taught in my foreshortened mission year I applied to the Queen’s unresponding body. All the while she breathed shallowly in my ear. I never raised her to a moment of passion.
    And when I was done, having spent my coin three times in her purse, she lay as unmoving as at the first.
    “Well plowed,” she said, speaking the ritual words to me. There was not even a change in her voice, not a bit of rushed breath or fading delight. Then she added in an undertone that I had to bend over her to hear. “Your enthusiasm and loyalty are to be commended.”
    “My Queen,” I answered in exhaustion.
    “And now,” she whispered, rising up slowly onto one elbow, “I have a task for you for which you have just received first payment.”
    “My lady,” I said.
    She told me. It was to be the first betrayal.

Tape 6: THE SEVEN GRIEVERS, PART III
    Place : Queen’s Hall of Grief, Room of Instruction
    Time : Queen’s Time 23, Thirteenth Matriarchy; labtime 2132.5+ A.D.
    Speaker : Queen’s Own Griever to the apprentices, including Lina-Lania
    Permission : No permission, preset, voice-activated
    A ND HERE ENDS THE SONG of the Seven Grievers as was told Master to Master down through the lines from the hour of the sisters’ joining to the moment of my tongue’s speaking. I have saved these woeful songs in my mouth and in my heart for the time when, as the Queen’s Own Griever, I may have to wail for the dying of the land once again.
    Hear, then, and listen well. My word is firm, firmer than sleep or the Cup that carries it, firmer than the strength of heroes. My voice makes the telling true. To listen, to remember, is to know.
    So the Night-Seers became the walkers in the day, six great families: Lands, Moons, Stars, Rocks, Waters, and Arcs and Bow. And they were dark and dark-seeing still; few indeed were their smiles.
    But of the People of L’Lal’ladia, the Place of Blessing and Rejoicing, there remained but two who were not drowned. Two there were who had hidden themselves from the rising waters, a brother and a sister who had bound themselves in an empty cask and floated out upon the very face of the sea.
    For the one hundred times one hundred days and nights, the two lay entwined in the wooden womb, rocked by the waters. And the only sound they heard was the lapping of the waves upon their boat.
    But then they thought they heard another sound, the dolorous chants of their dark sisters weeping upon a new-made shore. So the brother and sister untwined themselves and pushed up the cover of their cask and revealed themselves to the watchers on the shore.
    And when they were hauled in by the nets of Waters and set upon the land, the Night-Seers saw that these two were unlike themselves, being tall and slim and fair.
    “Come,” said the two, “there is still song in the world other than dirges. There is still light that pierces the night. We who are taller than you, we can see farther. We who are slimmer than you, we can run faster. We who are fairer-skinned than you, we are closer to the Light.”
    And the darker children saw this was so and knelt before the two.
    “We will make a place of beauty, a place